House prices rise on the Mediterranean Coast

The house price index compiled by the Spanish valuations company Tinsa has shown prices on the Mediterranean Coast as having risen for the first time since January 2008. The year-on-year increase for March is marginal at just 0.2% but is still extremely significant particularly when one considers that prices on the coast have fallen continuously since 2008.

The cumulative peak to present decrease in prices on the Mediterranean Coast according to Tinsa stands at a huge 48.7%. This figure is the highest of all the areas studied by the company and shows just how badly affected the Spanish coast has been due to the crisis in the country’s property sector.

The year-on-year increase for March also comes just a year after the worst year-on-year decrease on record was posted in March 2014 with prices down 11.9%. The statistic for last March represented the third consecutive year of double digit price falls for the coast and the change in 2015 highlights just how much the market has changed in the last year.

For Spain in general the news was less positive as the average value of property fell by 2.8% year-on-year in March and has now fallen 41.4% since its peak. Tinsa believes that prices are now stabilising but that it is still too early to call the bottom of the market in regards to prices although other institutions such as the INE and Spain’s Registrars have already reported price increases.

The Mediterranean Coast was the only one of the five areas of Spain included in Tinsa’s index which showed an increase in March as prices fell in Metropolitan Areas by 5.8%, Capitals and Large Cities by 2.1%, the Balearic and Canary Islands by 1.7% and in Remaining Municipalities the decrease stood at 3.8%.

Tinsa continues to pin the full recovery of the property sector on an improvement in the Spanish economy and a decrease in unemployment. If both these variables improve as has been forecast then Tinsa predicts that there will be a more generalised increase in sales which will lead to full price stabilisation.